


Nerds with Stars in Their Eyes

by undersail2013



Category: Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010)
Genre: Asexual Character, Family Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Nerdiness, Thanksgiving, patching up some plot holes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undersail2013/pseuds/undersail2013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A simpler time, before they found themselves on opposite sides of a Stonehenge apocalypse...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nerds with Stars in Their Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> omg this movie... I want so badly to like it, but it's got plot holes big enough to drive a jeep through... So here's me, slapping down some asphalt and hoping for the best...
> 
> for Jacob's accent, I must direct your attn to the movie Par 6... *melting in the Texas heat*

“I just keep running into you! Jacob, right?”

The younger man looked up from his book, annoyed by the interruption. He had only ten minutes left before his lecture on exoplanets, and he really wanted to finish reading this chapter on longitudinal electromagnetic fields in the Bermuda Triangle before he had to head into the auditorium. “Yeah, I’m Jacob, who’s-” and stopped. As he slid his eyes up the dark figure before him, he almost gasped. Valiantly though he tried, he couldn’t hide his astonishment. “Yeah,” he breathed, awestruck. “You’re Joseph, right? Joseph Leshem?”

“You remember me,” he smiled, crossing his arms. 

“Of course I remember you.” Jacob shook off some his shock. _Be cool, Jake, don’t be such a dork._ “Uh, you were in Dr. Schwartz’s class, right?”

Joseph nodded. “Geology for non-majors. You know, for the longest time, I thought you were the GA.” 

“W-what?” Jacob stammered, somewhat embarrassed. “W-why would you think that? I’ve been the youngest person in the class my entire life!”

“Are you kidding me?” Joseph slid onto the bench next to Jacob. “You knew everything! People stopped you on the way out the door to ask you to explain stuff.”

Jacob couldn’t control his face. He spun away, now definitely embarrassed. Recovering, he forced a chuckle. “It just came easily, I guess. Not like philosophy.” Joseph said nothing, didn’t respond in the slightest, so Jacob pushed himself to continue. “Not like, um, Dr. Davis’ class.”

“Dr. Davis? Mark?”

“Yes, Mark Davis. He taught, oh, what was the course?”

“Textual Orientation,” they exclaimed in unison.

“Right!” Joseph nodded. “You weren’t in that class, were you?”

“Yeah. Freshman year. I didn’t say much then.”

Joseph stared at Jacob, brow furrowed. “Hmm. Guess I was just too absorbed to-” He cleared his throat. “That was the class that got me into archaeology in the first place! Before that, I was gonna be an actor.”

“Really? Well then, I’m glad you moved into archaeology.”

“What do you mean?”

Jacob blushed to his toes. “Oh, nothing, it’s just that, um…” he hesitated before gushing, “I saw your presentation last year, your senior thesis, and wow! I-I never knew ancient Egyptian prophecies could be so…”

Feeling bold, Joseph leaned in, dropped his voice to a whisper. “So… what… Jacob?”

Jacob gulped a lungful of air, fought for an ounce of courage to meet those gorgeous mocha eyes. His own baby blues wide, smile bright, he rasped, “Exhilarating!”

Calmly, quietly, with the barest hint of a smile, Joseph asked, “You liked my defense?” 

Jacob nodded, never breaking eye contact.

The archaeologist looked down, smirked out an amused sound. “What do you say, we go grab a coffee, and I can tell you what I’ve been working on this summer.”

/\ [**] /\

Joseph couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Smooth as he had been talking to Jacob earlier outside the science building, he just couldn’t bring himself to interrupt the baristas, yammering on about how many shots of syrup constituted a flirtation. 

Sensing his frustration, Jacob gently shoved Joseph aside and positioned himself between the register and the coffee bar, fully in the line of sight. “Excuse me,” he demanded, beckoning at the nearest of the two aproned women. “My friend and I would like to order a couple of coffees. If it’s not too much trouble,” he snarked.

“Oh sure, sorry, sir,” said the first one (“Brenda” by her name tag), gliding to the register. “What can I get you boys?”

“I’ll have a triple red-eye, macchiato please.” Turning to Joseph, he gestured, “What’ll you have?”

“Oh, uh, give me a dragonwell, but in the smaller _tetsubin_ , so the tea doesn’t turn bitter before I can drink it all. And do you have the cast-iron cups? I’ll need one of those.” 

“Did you get that?” Jacob asked Brenda.

“Got it,” she laughed. “What name can I put on the red eye?”

“Jake.”

“Okay, got it. Did you want to start a tab?”

Jacob looked to Joseph, who nodded toward the cashier. “Yes, please.” To Jacob, he added in a low voice, “I’ll get it.”

“You don’t have to-”

“It’s my pleasure.” Somehow, the last word caught at the butterflies in Jacob’s stomach, drawing out a smile.

Joseph wanted to wait for his tea; Jacob wandered off to claim the two comfy chairs at the back of the shop. 

“This is cozy,” Joseph laughed as he dropped off his teapot.

Jacob prevaricated. “I love these chairs. The others are, uh, too small for me.”

“How tall are you, anyway?” Joseph asked, leaning forward against the back of the second chair. 

“Six-one.”

Joseph’s face was saying things Jacob didn’t want him to give voice to. 

“Jake?” the barista sang out.

“Let me get that,” Joseph murmured.

Jacob sighed his relief. However brilliant Joseph may be, however cute he looked in a button-down shirt and a pretentious scarf, Jacob was not ready for _that_ conversation just yet.

“Your caffeine overdose in a cup, my friend?”

Jacob smiled graciously. “Thanks.” He popped the lid off and set both lid and cup on the tiny table between their two chairs. “So did you discover new prophesies or what?”

“Not new, no. But I had a major breakthrough. I had chosen this particular text predicting pyramidal structures, knowing that only a handful of scholars had ever actually tackled it. Not much written on it. So anything I revealed would make a big impact.”

“That’s rather ambitious for a senior thesis, isn’t it? My advisor recommended-”

“I’m nothing if not ambitious,” he winked. “Anyways, I made good progress in my analysis, between what had been previously observed and my own interpretations. Most of the text related to tropical pyramids, but this one section of text eluded scholars. And I discovered why!”

“Why?” Jacob noticed he had scooted to the edge of the chair, his coffee in hand, halted halfway to his lips.

“Because if I’m right, the ancient Egyptians predicted a pyramid considerably outside of the tropics.” He smirked, inviting Jacob to ask the obvious follow-up. 

He took the bait: “Where?”

“In Maine.”

Jacob’s face crumpled into a frown. “Maine?”

“Maine!” Joseph crowed.

/\ [**] /\

“You’re insane.”

“I’m not! I’m, Joseph, I’m not talking about Data’s head. This is different, and I saw it, with my own eyes, through an actual telescope!”

“I’m no astronomer, my friend, but there’s no way you could get that kind of resolution-”

“Joseph, would you just listen? It’s not human-scale; it’s much larger. Think, think the face of Mars.”

“Which is a confirmed pareidolia.”

Jacob threw his hands in the air, frustrated. “My advisor saw it, too.”

“And what did Dr. Marsh say?”

He sighed heavily. Shoulders slumped, he turned back to face Joseph. “He suggested we keep it under our hats. For now.” 

Joseph nodded. 

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Mr. Pyramids of Maine,” Jacob hissed.

“Jake. Listen to me, Jake!” He grasped Jacob by the shoulders. “Look at me. Do you have any idea how many people know about my pyramid theory?”

Jacob shook his head, petulantly refusing to return Joseph’s gaze.

“Three.”

That got Jacob’s attention. “Three?” he breathed.

“Me. My advisor. And you. That’s it.”

He let out a long breath. “Why me?”

“Because I wanted to impress you,” he said with a contemplative frown. “Because I like you.”

“You barely knew me. You still barely know me.” They’d only met for coffee two weeks ago. Granted, they’d talked on the phone every day since. Not to mention emails when they should have been researching, ICQ when they should have been writing, and two midnight visits to the 24-hour diner between their two campuses.

Joseph shrugged. “I took a chance. You struck me as the sort who would understand.” His hand crept to Jacob’s cheek.

Jacob ducked his head shyly, blushing scarlet. 

He dropped his hand. “When will you let me kiss you?” Joseph pleaded.

Jacob just sighed. 

/\ [**] /\

“We need a proper date, my friend,” Joseph announced.

“Okay. I just have to finish up with this source and I can meet you at the diner in an hour and a half.”

“No, not the diner.” Jacob could almost hear the scowl on his face down the phone line. “A real date. A real restaurant. Maybe a movie. Walk in the park, the whole nine. You free Friday?”

“Of course!” But the image made Jacob smile. “I had no idea you were so romantic,” he drawled.

Joseph burst out laughing. “What the hell was that voice?”

“You like it?” he continued.

“Oh my god, do I! Where in the world did you pick up a gorgeous accent like that?”

“This? This is how I sound naturally.”

“Whoa.” Joseph almost moaned. “So your regular voice?”

He reverted to the familiar speech pattern. “Fake. I dropped the Texas accent back when I started my first college-radio show. So people would listen to my words instead of thinking of me as a stupid hick.”

“It’s, uh, huh. It’s really hot.”

Jacob laughed, a completely open laugh that crinkled his eyes and curled his lips, baring all his teeth. “That’s a first.”

“What? You have a really cute voice. I wish it was your everyday voice.”

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

Joseph blinked at the non sequitur. “Uh, not much; going over my bibliography and following up on a few papers that your source on electromagnetic field alignment recommended. Why?”

“Come home to Galveston with me, and you’ll get to hear me sound like this until you’re sick of it.”

He sucked in breath. “I don’t know. Is that a good idea? I mean, you and me, we- in Texas?” Jacob distinctly heard Joseph _not_ saying, _We haven’t even kissed and you want me to meet the folks?_

“If you don’t want to-”

“I want to. I’m just concerned that-”

“Joseph, it’s the south. They’ll be way more freaked out that you’re black than that you’re gay.”

An uncomfortable silence sprouted before Jacob could figure out how to fix it. 

“You think they will? Be freaked out?” Joseph asked.

“No. No, come on, Joseph, they’re gonna love you. Mom and Burt are totally cool.” A thought tugged at him. “Okay, maybe Grandma. But all grandparents are a little racist.” He paused. “The Jewish thing is actually more likely to throw them.”

“Great, black, Jewish, and gay. I’m, like, the perfect boyfriend.”

Another silence. _Boyfriend._ Now there was a concept neither of them had even attempted to broach. After all, as Joseph liked to point out, they hadn’t even kissed. “Um. Yes. I think so,” and suddenly Jacob had won triple points for suaveness. “So, will you come meet my family and not work through Thanksgiving like a big nerdy dork?” Jacob drawled.

“I wouldn’t miss it, my friend.”

“Boyfriend.”

“So hot.”

/\ [**] /\

At the beach house in Galveston, the Glaser siblings were making each other’s lives miserable. Driving Mom crazy was just an added bonus.

“Joseph convinced you to go to a shooting range?” Mike was incredulous. “After the number of times you screamed about gun control?” 

“Oh big whoop, so I know how to operate a handgun and shoot a paper target. I still believe that firearms are far too readily available in this country. Over half of all suicides can be linked to firearms, and gun violence kills more people than-”

“Seriously, Jake,” Hannah teased, “what’s up with the voice?” 

“What, I can’t sound like I actually belong here?”

“Of course you can,” Mike replied. “But you never do. Is he showing off for you, Joseph?”

“I plead the fifth,” Joseph chuckled.

“You’re hilarious, Mike,” Jacob returned. “I’m just curious about how you’re still upright. Triplets? You and Sue must have-”

“Oh haha. How can you call yourself a scientist and still be so clueless about human reproduction?”

“Hey, hey, I am not clu-”

“Save it, bro. Does Joseph know about your-”

“Hey! Shut your mouth, Mike, or I’ll shut it for you,” Jacob growled. He glanced nervously at Joseph. Yes, he looked puzzled, but not urgently so, shooting a small questioning shrug, which was effectively silenced by a head shake that said, _Not now._

“That’s enough, guys,” Mom shouted from the kitchen. “Mike, go check on your wife. The rest of you, get the hell out of the house until dinnertime. Go swimming, take a walk, I don’t care. Just get.” 

“Okay Mom!” Hannah yelled back. She whispered something into her boyfriend’s ear. He moved off with a nod. To her brother, she said, “Paul and I are walking to the inconvenience store for a pack of smokes. You want anything?”

“No, we’re good.”

“You and Joseph should head to the beach. Nice and romantic, no one else for miles!”

“Thanks, Hannah; I think we can decide for ourselves.”

She raised her hands in surrender. “Hey, suit yourselves. I was just making a suggestion! I’m gonna go visit the ladies’ before we head out.”

Suddenly alone in the room, Jacob clapped his hands together once. “Shall we?”

“Let’s.”

As they stood and made their way around the coffee table, Paul called Jacob into the front hall. “Hannah has a question for you.”

Without thinking, Jacob twined his fingers with Joseph’s and pulled him along. “What’s up?” he asked, stopping before Paul, directly in front of the staircase to the upper floor. 

“Hannah says you need to stand right here,” positioning Jacob one foot to the right.

Hannah herself appeared out of nowhere and maneuvered Joseph two feet to his left. “Look up.”

_This again._ “Mistletoe,” Jacob lamented, closing his eyes in exasperation. “Hannah, it’s not even Christmas yet; please don’t.”

Joseph spoke. “Hannah, can you give us a moment? Please?”

She pouted. “You two better follow the rules.”

Footsteps echoed down the hall and away toward the kitchen. “She’s gone.”

“I am so sorry, Joseph. My siblings are not usually so-” His words were swallowed up by Joseph’s mouth on his own. A small whine escaped Jacob’s throat. “Joseph,” he drawled.

“It’s tradition, Jake,” he purred. He stood on tiptoes to give himself a whole inch of height advantage.

“Okay.”

They might have stayed like that, kissing so sweetly, their first kiss, and the second, and tenth as well, until long after dinnertime, past bedtime, through Christmas shopping and their flight back to California. Except for the giggling. “Shut it, Hannah,” Jacob tried to shout the words. Instead they slipped quietly against Joseph’s lips and were lost. The laughter only intensified. He tried again. “Hannah, you’re such an asshole.”

“We can stop,” Joseph mumbled.

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Me either.” But a minute more of her spying and Jacob snapped. He wheeled fiercely on his sister, eyes flashing, uttering curses. “Goddammit! Seriously Hannah, shut the fuck up!”

“Whoa, calm down, Skippy, we were just playing.”

Jacob glared her to silence. He grabbed Joseph’s hand, and this time he tugged him out the back door and down to the dunes. He plopped down into the sand, letting his fury wash over him and away to the sea. Joseph knelt nearby, hand still trapped. With his free hand, he traced a pattern-less shape across Jacob’s back, and he waited. 

Some minutes passed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his radio voice as flat as the midwest. “I don’t know why I freaked out so badly.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.” Joseph drew a deep breath. “It was nice, though. You’re a good kisser.”

Jacob scoffed. “Thanks. Uh, you, too, actually.”

“So what’s the big deal? With kissing? Why have you fought it so long?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Softly Joseph replied, “I believe there’s a robot head on the moon and an ancient pyramid in Maine. Try me.”

Jacob shook his head. “Somehow, it’s even weirder than that. I mean, that’s science. It makes sense, even when it doesn’t. This, though-”

“Spit it out, Glaser.”

He inhaled and exhaled a few times, trying to decide how to start. In the end, he went with the blunt answer.

“I don’t like sex.” 

“You don’t like- okay. I was not expecting that.”

“You’re mad.”

“No,” elongating each sound. “Why?”

“For leading you on?”

“What I mean is, why don’t you like sex? Did someone hurt you?”

“What? No!”

“Well, are you sure you’re gay? Maybe you just haven’t-”

“Jesus Christ, Joseph,” he retorted. “See, this is why I avoided this discussion!” He was breathing hard, panting actually; he could feel his heart racing. He clambered to his feet and started off down the beach. “Just forget I said anything.”

Joseph reached for him, but Jacob’s anger made him quick. Joseph nearly sprinted to catch up. “Hey wait, please wait!” He snatched at his hand. 

Jacob relented at the contact, turned towards Joseph, but not without rolling his eyes. “What?”

He sighed. “Don’t run away, please. Explain to me what you mean. I won’t interrupt. Promise.”

It was Jacob’s turn to sigh, heavily. He hesitated, searching Joseph’s face for some moments before responding. “Okay. Sit with me.” He dropped cross-legged onto the hard-packed sand near the water’s edge and stared out at the retreating tide. “The short answer is, I’m asexual.” He glanced at Joseph to find him nodding expectantly. “Meaning, I don’t want to have sex, but I want to have relationships. With men.” He examined his hands. “I’ve had sex with women. Well, one. In high school. She was a friend of mine, until I found out she had a crush on me. We dated for a year before she convinced me that we should- Anyways, I didn’t like it, and I thought there was something wrong with me. _She_ thought there was something wrong with me. And after that, it was hard to go to movies or hang out at her house and do homework together without feeling like we should be making out or- So we broke up. And eventually I tried again. There was this one guy who everyone knew was gay.” Joseph chuckled but said nothing. “Well, maybe you can guess, then. I asked him to show me the ropes, so to speak. How do I know, what do I do, that kind of thing.”

“Yup, been there,” Joseph nodded.

Jacob frowned. “Still, it wasn’t my proudest moment. I knew that I liked him in a way I had never liked Liz, but- Well, no big surprise, I didn’t like it any better.” Joseph found his hand and squeezed it, earning a small sad smile. “So I gave up. I figured there was something wrong with me and gave up on trying to fix it. Not that I had time for boyfriends or girlfriends, or whatever it was I wanted. My grades were slipping, Joseph; that’s how bad I stressed over it!” A small whistle. “I get to college and get my first boyfriend.”

“Rob?”

“Yeah,” but he gives Joseph a funny look as if to ask, _Why would you know that?_

Joseph shrugs.

“Yeah, so Rob and I go out a few times. He was great, we got along great. We were physical, I guess, to some degree, and I knew I’d never be with a girl again. But I still didn’t like sex. And when I told him, he took it personally. Said I was leading him on.” He paused, hearing Joseph tsk. “Thanks. So fast-forward to now, when I have an amazing boyfriend,” tilting his body Joseph’s direction, “and my stupid sister forces my hand and I have to have _the talk_ with him.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“No. I should have said something sooner.”

As the silence between them lengthens into uncomfortable territory, Joseph clears his throat. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“We can go back, pretend we never-”

“No. Thing is, I really do like some of the physical stuff. Touching, cuddling. Kissing. I love kissing. I love kissing you.” He turns his face, sweeps his eyes over Joseph’s face, neck, the little crook of collarbone that will taste just perfect. His lips feel so dry; he licks them wet. Tearing his gaze away, he looks back over the gulf, avoiding eye contact. “Even, um, blowjobs. I like. Um. Sometimes.”

“Jake.”

He turns again toward Joseph. “Are you mad?”

“No, I’m not mad. I think we can work with this.” He cupped Jacob’s cheek, pulled him close. “I could kiss you, just kiss you, forever.”

“I hope so,” he drawled, and their lips met.

Two hours later, as Hannah said grace over the Thanksgiving meal, Jacob felt very grateful that Joseph’s darker complexion disguised the mark on his collarbone.

/\ [**] /\

Poor Joseph, being the newest significant other, drew the Thanksgiving short straw. The icebreaker, the favorite victim of small talk, the one everyone had to grill about his past, present, and future. 

“What do you do?” Burt asked, only the fourth person to ask the question in the half-hour since the turkey was carved.

Joseph sighed down at his plate as if he could watch the food cooling, untouched. “I’m finishing up my Ph.D. My research looks at the connections between pre-Columbian pyramids and those of the ancient world.”

“Oh are they similar?”

Jacob, catching the thread of the conversation, glanced across the table and smiled. He knew Joseph’s spiel and he never tired of watching the spark ignite behind his eyes as he discussed his work.

“Not at all, but I have found very clear implications in a series of ancient Egyptian texts corroborating that several Mesoamerican structures were built concurrently with the pyramids of Giza.”

Unsurprisingly, the topic held a good deal more interest for the two nerds with stars in their eyes than it did for their host. Burt cleared his throat, uttered a hasty, “Oh look, we’re out of the thing,” and exited the conversation as abruptly as he’d entered it. 

“Thank you,” Jacob mouthed.

“For what?” Joseph shrugged.

Jacob just beamed.

/\ [**] /\

“It was aliens.”

“What was aliens?” 

They had resumed their spots at the shoreline while they waited out the football game. Not even Mom’s drunken chocolate pecan pie was worth the agony of two awful football games in one day. Jacob could understand the family’s dedication if the Cowboys had a prayer, but it was the Cowboys and it was Thanksgiving. So he’d bailed. On the pretext of walking off dinner, he’d dragged Joseph down to the beach for the second time that day.

“Our predecessors on this planet built pyramids all over the world. Concurrently. So what if it wasn’t humans but aliens?”

“That’s preposterous. Why would an advanced alien civilization beam down just to build pyramids?”

“It makes more sense than ancient peoples without access to global communications equipment spontaneously constructing similarly shaped structures all over the world at the same time.”

“Yeah, but aliens?” He considered it. “There’s no proof. You’ve wandered into crackpot territory, my friend.”

“Crackpot or genius? That’s all a matter of perspective. Look at Copernicus-”

“He had proof.”

Jacob frowned. “Should we assume, then, that the Known World was somehow, in reality, far more vast than history records?”

“Yes, I think that’s a fair assumption. No proof as yet, but somewhere, maybe, just waiting to be discovered.”

“Maybe if we could discover how they communicated across distances. Whether it was personal contact between civilizations- 

“Explorers reaching out to newly conquered empires, like the Columbian contact. Surely the Old World sent expeditions to spread knowledge, to explore, and we just haven’t found the evidence.” 

“Or something more, um, ethereal,” he offered. “ Lubaantun comes to mind.”

“The crystal skull?”

“It’s a thought.”

“Damn, do all astrophysicists have such wild imaginations?”

Jacob looked hurt. “It’s kind of in my job description. How do you think we find exoplanets in the first place? We do the math, and when the math doesn’t fit, we develop alternate theories. No one believed that we’d find planets around a pulsar, but Wolszczan and Frail did it.” His eyes glowed. “It had never been done before, and that was only ten years ago. Joseph, we are entering a spectacular new era of unprecedented discoveries. Who knows how many we’ll find if we keep asking ourselves, ‘What if?’” 

“You know you’re really hot when you geek out.”

He hardly heard. “Exoplanets are all but unknowable, yet we take the known data and tease out details, like composition and habitability. Habitability! Extraterrestrial life!” His face alive, he paused, relishing the implication. “Giordano Bruno, speculating that the stars might be suns, essentially postulated that life as we know it might exist in every corner of the universe. And _Isaac Newton,_ of all people, Isaac _fucking_ Newton concurred.”

“Isaac Newton the physicist or Isaac Newton the alchemist?” Joseph whispered.

“Isaac Newt-” He almost shouted, but something in Joseph’s demeanor made him stop. “Oh! You’re teasing.”

“You really are hot when you geek out.”

Jacob did not allow him another word on the subject. 

/\ [**] /\

“It’s almost six in the morning, Jake; haven’t you submitted that fucking dissertation yet? Stop fiddling with your citations and just hit send.”

“I did that hours ago.”

“Then come to bed,” Joseph whined.

“Not yet. Inspiration struck; I’m about halfway through a rough draft on the robot head.”

“No, dude, don’t. If the folks at HSCA hear about it, your career will be over before it even starts.”

“Joseph, I believe in this. This could be huge.”

“A huge fiasco. Come to bed.”

Jacob sighed. He hit ctrl+S and turned off the monitor. “Okay,” shedding his thick Irish cable-knit sweater and tossing his boxers onto Joseph’s ever-growing laundry pile. He slithered under the covers. “Just until your alarm goes off,” he whispered. 

He had only just thrown Joseph’s underpants at the hamper when the computer made a _boop_ noise. 

“You’ve got mail,” Jacob quipped, lips never leaving the taut skin of Joseph’s chest.

“You’ve got mail. I logged off before I came to bed, like, six hours ago.”

Jacob stilled. “It could be about the file. It’s probably corrupted. Shit, I knew not to convert the graphs before I-”

“Shh. Go check.”

“But-”

“It’s okay. You fretting doesn’t help either of us: the sooner you go, the sooner you’ll come back.”

One last kiss. He dragged the sheet over his head and draped the covers back over Joseph, tucking him in. 

“Go!”

In the time it took Jacob to pad over to the computer, several more _boops_ sounded. “What the hell?” He jabbed the power button, but the ancient monitor took a moment to punch up an image. More _booping_ as he found the window with his inbox. “‘Congratulations’?”

“Scroll down to the first one.”

“Thank you, Joseph, because I’ve never used email before,” he laughed.

Joseph balled up a sock and threw it at Jacob’s head. 

“Ow, hey!” He resumed scrolling. “It’s from my advisor.” Clicking through, his eyes widened. It didn’t make sense; the words barely registered, yet they made his heart pound.

“What is it?”

His mouth moved as he carefully read each individual word. “But that’s impossible.”

“Jake?” Joseph was sitting up now. “Are you okay, babe?”

“This doesn’t make sense. It’s from my advisor,” he said slowly. Jesus, his whole body felt like it was vibrating. 

“What’s wrong with the paper?”

“Nothing’s wrong with the paper. At least, I don’t know, that’s not the point.”

“Jake, you’re being weird.” He hauled himself out of bed. “Jake, are you-” but that’s when he saw the text. His hand dropped to Jacob’s shoulder. Squeezed it tight. “Jake.”

“It’s impossible. No grad student has ever won this award before. Certainly no one as young as me. It’s impossible.”

A huge smile broke across Joseph’s face. “Jake, this is incredible, but it is not impossible. You did it. You cracked that thing all by yourself. You deserve this.” He crouched beside the hard folding chair Jacob always used when writing. “I’m so proud of you!”

The shower of kisses only barely pulled Jacob out of his daze. “Who would even nominate me for something like this?”

“You gorgeous idiot. It must have been Spencer!”

“Yeah but-”

“Look, who sent the email? Spencer, right? And Spencer Marsh doesn’t kid around. If he thought your work merited recognition, he’d nominate you in such glowing terms that no committee on the planet wouldn’t pick you.”

“You think it’s real?”

Joseph laughed, kissed Jacob’s hands, pulled him close to kiss his lips. “It’s real, babe. Of course it’s real.”

Jacob’s eyes wandered back to the screen. His hands were shaking, he could hear and feel his pulse in his ears, and he didn’t trust his vision. But Joseph believed it. It had to be true.

The alarm blared. Six-thirty. Joseph rushed to shut it off. As he fumbled with the buttons, though, he felt wide warm hands splay across his hips. “You good now?”

“I’m very good. Turn off your alarm; we’re calling out today.”

/\ [**] /\

“So you winning a major award is all it takes to get you in the sack?”

“Yes, but only when I win a major award,” Jacob panted, smiling. “I don’t always want it, but when I do, ho-ley shit.”

“I love when you talk like that.”

Jacob laughed. 

“When we’re in Boston, you should go to the grocery store and ask where to find stuff. They’ll have no idea what you’re saying.”

“’Scuse me, where’s the maynays at?”

Joseph shrieked. “Whaddya lookin’ fwa?”

“The maynays. Fer the tater salad.”

“Taters!” he gasped, still laughing maniacally. “Do you really say taters?”

“I asked for taters last night at the diner,” Jacob giggled.

“I’m so glad we both got jobs in town. I can’t believe I get to keep you.” He calmed himself. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

Joseph just smiled.


End file.
